American Indian artifacts are covered up a lot, experts say

The recent decision to rebury artifacts and grade over a 4,500-year-old American Indian midden in Larkspur wasn’t the first time sacred burials and archaeological sites in the Bay Area and California have been covered up, literally or figuratively.

Some 425 marshland village sites were recorded between Santa Cruz and Sonoma counties in 1907 by UC Berkeley archaeologist Nels Nelson, but nearly all of them are now gone.

A Miwok grinding stone recovered in 2013 at Novato village site

In the last few decades, many sites have been paved over for development, often without anybody except those who were immediately involved knowing anything about them, according to Indian representatives and historians. One of the most egregious, according to archaeologists, was a historic shell mound that was bulldozed away when the Emeryville Shopping Center was built, covering the last remnant of what was probably the largest archaeological site in the Bay Area.

The Larkspur midden, which included grizzly bear bones and a ceremonial California condor burial, was legally removed and reburied, but several archaeologists said the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria knew what was happening and should have done more to preserve the archaeological and geologic record.

The Rose Lane Development is being built on top of a 4,500-year-old Miwok archaeological site

Gregg Castro, a Salinan and Ohlone cultural preservationist and member of the Society for California Archaeology, said it is the height of hypocrisy for archaeologists who worked at the site – and were likely paid a substantial sum for the service — to blame the Federated Indians, who have few legal choices in a system jury-rigged to benefit developers.

“What did (the archaeologists) do with their “outrage?” asked Castro. “Were they in anyway complicit in the outcome?”

Indeed, said Jelmer Eerkens, professor of archaeology at UC Davis, the archaeologists had a moral and ethical responsibility to protect the site and they didn’t.

Castro, who is also a member of the Native American Heritage Commission, said the focus should be on “the prejudiced, hypocritical preservation system” that allows sacred sites to be wiped out “then lets the powerless field workers caught in the headlights take the blame, while others walk off unscathed and richer for it.”

“No one walks out of these situations completely clean,” he said, but society would do better to cast blame on “who is shoveling the dirt and not just who gets dirtied by the mud slinging.”

But the issues go beyond the ultimate disposition of the human remains, according to several of the archaeologists who worked at the site. They accused tribal representatives of setting arbitrary limits on the number of items that could be radiocarbon dated, restricting photography and prohibiting the collections of artifacts and samples for laboratory testing.

There were prohibitions against hydrologic and other testing, including a total ban on DNA sampling, the researchers said. Such testing, Eerkens and others said, could have been used to confirm a genetic link to the Indians of Graton Rancheria.

“They overstepped their role and started making decisions that had nothing to do with their advisory capacity,” said Al Schwitalla, an archaeologist hired by Holman and Associates to analyze artifacts at the site. “They tried to dictate scientific protocol that had nothing to do with the burials.”

An excavation last year at a Miwok site in Novato

Schwitalla and others said they were given only 60 days after the excavation was completed to analyze the physical data, a process that ideally would have taken at least a year and could have gone on for decades.

“It would have been nice to have more time to thoroughly study the remains and the artifacts we uncovered,” Schwitalla said. “We got as much information as quickly as we could, but the time constraints cut into what we could learn.”